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Similar to desktop replacements, most gaming laptops are large, heavy and aren’t usually too hot on battery life. There are a number of specialized brands and boutique shops that will let you customize their products with all the latest components and even tailor their looks to your taste – but they’ll also charge a nice premium for it. Sager NP8120 (Built on Clevo X8100) If you don’t mind stretching your budget to well over $2,000 for a few extra perks and top quality personalized service, there are a number of boutique PC shops waiting to take your order....

Testing performed by Sophos confirms that Tuesday’s KB5014699 Windows update neutralizes the Follina exploit, which allowed malicious Microsoft Word files to execute Powershell commands on target systems. The exploit affected Office 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and some versions of Microsoft 365 on Windows 10 and 11. Follina worked through Microsoft Diagnostic Tool to retrieve an HTML file from a remote web server and then used ms-msdt MSProtocol Uniform Resource Identifier to run Powershell code....

Faced with a probable recession in the next year and rising rideshare insurance costs, the co-founders had no choice but to become leaner which required them to part with additional employees. Lyft said it expects the layoffs to cost between $27 million to $32 million, which will show up on its fourth quarter earnings report. It is the second wave of cuts in four months for the ridesharing service. Back in July, Lyft laid off around 60 employees....

Unreal Tournament 3 was tested at two different resolutions, though as we have seen time and time again at 1920x1200 you are almost certainly guaranteed to be GPU limited rather than CPU limited. At 1024x768 we did see a 10fps difference between the Phenom II X4 965 and the Core i7 920, a margin which favored the Intel processor. In Street Fighter IV, frame rates were locked at around 166-167fps when using a 1920x1200 resolution, while at 1024x768 the Intel Core i7 920 managed to outperform AMD’s Phenom by an 11fps margin....

Worok is using multi-stage malware designed to steal data and compromise high-profile victims, using steganography techniques to hide pieces of the final payload in a plain PNG image file. The novel malware was first discovered by ESET in September. The company describes Worok as a new cyber espionage group that is using undocumented tools, including a steganography routine designed to extract a malicious payload from a plain PNG image file....

All of the benefits of an AMOLED display are on show here, including deep black levels and fantastic viewing angles. Meizu lists a contrast ratio of 10,000:1, although considering the Pro 6 Plus’ display switches off its pixels to display blacks, the actual contrast ratio is closer to infinite. In my testing, I recorded a very small amount of light output from a fully black display, resulting in a contrast ratio over 200,000:1....

Running at 1440p scrubbed out the lower-end cards. The HD 7950 was good for just 30fps on average with a 24fps minimum. To maintain at least 30fps or more at all times you’ll need at least a GTX 680 or GTX 960 from Nvidia or R9 290 from AMD, though the R9 380 did come close with a 28fps minimum. Nvidia’s big guns were still able to reach the 60fps limit and while the GTX 980 was good for 60fps on average, it did drop down to 51fps at times....

We briefly tested the previous display drivers from both camps though as far as we could tell, neither brought real performance improvements. What did improve performance was Metro’s day 1 patch, so our results might differ a bit from those who published early. Generally performance fluctuates quite a bit in most games depending on the levels and areas and thus what’s being rendered. Though developers try to optimize levels for more consistent performance, we wouldn’t say they’ve done a poor job of this with Metro Exodus, but you will see frame rates with a GTX 1060 at 1080p as high as 70-80 fps in some areas and then just 30-40 fps in others....

The updated version of Task Manager was discovered in Windows build 22538 that was rolled out yesterday. The latest build doesn’t contain a lot of notable changes, but Gustave Monce, the same engineering student who managed to get Windows 11 running on a phone, discovered the hidden feature. The new-look Task Manager isn’t a complete change from the current tool. Microsoft’s mica blur effect, which incorporates theme and desktop wallpaper into the background of windows such as apps and settings, is evident....

The next installment in the Metal Gear series will position Raiden as the main character, and the debut teaser/art renders depict him as the cyborg ninja he was in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. No plot or setting has been revealed, but developer Kojima has referred to the game as the “next generation MGS5” – for whatever that’s worth. Metal Gear Solid: Rising will mark the first MGS title to appear on the Xbox 360, and it will reportedly use a new game engine....

The MSM8610 includes two ARM Cortex-A7 CPU cores clocked at up to 1.2 GHz, and an Adreno 302 GPU clocked at 400 MHz. Interestingly, CPU-Z indicates the Moto E features an Adreno 305 GPU, however both Motorola and Qualcomm’s documentation indicates it’s actually the Adreno 302, and whatever they say is most likely correct. If you want a comparison between this chip and the Snapdragon 400 MSM8226 found in the Moto G, there are essentially two differences: the CPU core count has been reduced from four to two (the cores are of the same type and clocked at the same frequency), and the slightly slower Adreno 302 replaces the Adreno 305....

In terms of graphics performance, the difference between the S626 and the S835 is massive. Again, while it doesn’t make a huge difference in basic tasks, in intensive Android games the huge performance gulf between these SoCs can make a genuine difference to in-game frame rates and the overall experience. The S835 is a huge 430 percent faster than the S626 in GPU workloads on average. In other words, the Adreno 540 is around five times faster than the Adreno 506....

Mionix’s flagship mouse is a wide body unit with a braided cable and gold USB connector. The unit itself is solid black with a smooth rubber surface encompassing it and a Mionix logo in the center that lends itself to illumination. Buttons include a standard left and right click button, clickable scroll wheel, up and down DPI selection buttons and left side thumb buttons. The scroll wheel has a grippy rubber surface, nice tactical feel and is easy to depress....

The CPU included in this laptop is an Intel Core i7-6700HQ, which we’ve reviewed before in a wide range of gaming laptops. The i7-6700HQ is a four-core, eight-thread processor clocked at 2.6 GHz, with Turbo boost taking a single core as high as 3.5 GHz. This 14nm CPU packs 6 MB of L3 cache, a 45W TDP, and an integrated GPU that is largely unused in a gaming laptop....

For example, recently we compared the Ryzen 5 5600 and Ryzen 7 5700X in a wide range of games and found that on average the 8-core CPU was just 5% faster, which wasn’t terribly surprising, but there were a surprising number of readers and viewers who claimed the data didn’t reflect real-world gaming performance. The reasoning is that gamers often watch or listen to YouTube videos while gaming, they have other programs such as Discord open, allowing them to chat with teammates, and sometimes they even stream/screen share using Discord....

A NASCAR racer pulled off an incredible and dangerous maneuver over the weekend at the Xfinity 500 that scored him a spot in the championship. It involved running his car into the outside wall and flooring it over the finish line. It looked like something straight out of a video game, and for a good reason. In a post-race interview, driver Ross Chastain said he learned the risky move while playing NASCAR 2005 on his GameCube when he was eight....

Netflix Games got off to a slow start, but 2022 sees the recently created gaming division picking up steam. Two weeks ago, it announced the addition of two new indy titles, bringing its total offering up to 12. It just launched two more titles—Hyper Hippo’s Dungeon Dwarves and Hextech Mayhem from Riot Games. Of course, both are mobile games, so hold your expectations in check. However, if you have enjoyed Netflix offerings so far, these should be up your alley....

Rumor has it that the next Battlefield game is in early development. According to Xfire, EA says it has learned lessons from Battlefield 2042 and plans to reverse changes it made in that game. The recently released title quickly became one of Steam’s worst-rated games of all time, and hundreds of thousands of players have petitioned for refunds. Players complained of numerous bugs and missing features like VoIP, server browsers, and persistent lobbies....

The metaverse is a controversial subject for many people, mainly because the companies looking to build it have different definitions of what it will entail. Pundits who closely follow its development believe it’s much like the internet — a technological evolution that will take years to materialize fully and whose impact on our lives will become more apparent in time. Many of the opinions and predictions about the internet during its early days have turned out surprisingly wrong....

The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 test doesn’t allow SLI to provide the big performance gains we have seen on previous tests. Adding a second GTX 460 graphics card only provided a 38% performance boost at 1920x1200 which was a bit disappointing. As a result the GeForce GTX 460 SLI configuration was 4% slower than a single GeForce GTX 480 graphics card. Despite the loss we still consider this a positive result for the SLI cards....